Don’t repeat Chamberlain’s Munich error, says Rifkind

Former foreign secretary issues warning ahead of conference

- DAVID MADDOX KATE DEVLIN

A former foreign secretary has warned Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy that they must use this weekend's Munich defence and security conference as an opportunity to stand up to Donald Trump over Ukraine.

Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind raised the spectre of the infamous 1938 Munich conference, where the then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain struck the “peace for our time” deal with Hitler and allowed him to invade Czechoslovakia.

Sir Keir, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, did not guarantee that Ukraine would have a seat at the table in the talks about ending the war with Russia, only saying that president Volodymyr Zelensky “must be involved”.

Mr Trump has suggested that a meeting between him and Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia could resolve the war, after the two had a telephone conversation in which the US president praised his Russian counterpart. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has suggested that Russia could keep Crimea as part of a deal, and that Ukraine should be barred from joining Nato.